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S. C. Das — Travels on the Shores of Lake Yamdo-Croft, [No. 3, 
est men of the village, which contained upwards of a hundred 
families. His house is very large and surrounded by a wall with three 
gates. There were plenty of willow, juniper and other fragrant plants 
in this village. The juniper plant formed a part of their fuel, which 
chiefly consisted of dried cattle dung. 
26th October.—I rose from bed at sunrise. Our miserly nabo 
came early to take back from us the curtain and the fine articles which 
he had lent us. We parted with him after an exchange of polite ex¬ 
pressions. He begged us to come to his house on our way back. We 
resumed our journey at 6 a.m. A villager joined us near the precipi¬ 
tous rock which stands at the entrance of the village on this side. He 
proved a pleasant companion for a few miles. We passed along the 
side of another small lake, and were shown the large village of Ling, 
the seat of the Jongpon of this side of the Yamdo District. This 
fellow talked of certain orders that were received by the Jongpon of 
Ling from Lhasa to examine strangers travelling within his jurisdic¬ 
tion. He also said that similar orders were sent to Sam-yea. We 
crossed two little streams with him by wading across them. When we 
came to the bank of a third stream, which was the largest, he parted 
with us after showing us the rab (ford). My pony, in wading through 
the half frozen stream, once sank up to his knees, Gopon extricated 
us with much exertion. The pony had several stumbles besides. We 
now entered the extensive table-land of Kamoling, the Arcadia of Tibet. 
Here were grazing hundreds of ponies belonging to the Government of 
Lhasa. The head of the Government stables has one of his establish¬ 
ments here. It took us several hours to cross a bend of this large 
pasture land. Its breadth was ten to twelve miles, but its length 
appeared very great. There was no water in the several water-courses 
which intersected the plain. In some of the streamlets bulging crusts 
of ice were seen. We were very thirsty. At noon we arrived at the 
village of Shabshe, containing nine or ten families. 
We cooked our breakfast in the court of a poor woman’s house, 
filled with goat’s dung and some goats’ hair-bags and hay. Our good 
namo kindly lent us some fire-wood. The object of our preferring dirty 
huts and stables in a village to clean flats and river banks was that we 
got fuel, water, water-vessels, &c., from the host, which, as a rule, 
were generally included in the nela (house-rent). The namo was a 
very well-behaved and obliging woman. Though very poor, she seemed 
to be in good spirits and cheerful. She has three children by two 
joint husbands. We bought one-fourth of a sheep at one tanka from 
one of her neighbours, and some barley meal, of inferior quality. 
After breakfast we resumed our journey. As there were several 
